Nasser Al-Attiyah, a Toyota factory team driver, crossed the finish line first in the second stage of the Dakar rally raid, but was only 14 seconds behind the Dutch-French crew of Eric van Loon and Sebastien Delaunay, also enters in a specially prepared racing SUV Toyota Hilux.
But third place in today’s 430km special was taken by Carlos Sainz, while his factory Audi Sport team, in its second year in the off-road electric vehicle RS Q e-tron, took the lead in the race. overall standings. .
Sebastien Loeb was unlucky today, his SUV Prodrive Hunter BRX reached the penultimate finish almost an hour and a half behind the leader.
“It was a very bad day for us,” admitted the nine-time world rally champion. – Because of the three flat tires we lost a lot of time. Personally, I didn’t like the ride at all. There are a lot of stones on the track, because of this everything was very bad.
I had to drive very slowly to avoid punctures. It was our only goal on today’s special and we ended up with three punctures. I had to make an attempt to repair one of the tires, but it took too long.”
Among the motorcyclists, the young American Mason Klein, rider of the KTM factory team, showed the best time, he also leads the individual standings by two minutes ahead of the much more experienced Australian Toby Price, also riding a KTM 450 Rally Raid- motorcycle .
Alexandre Giraud won Monday in the quad class – this is already the fifth Dakar for the Frenchman, who won a number of stages last year and is now aiming for even more serious success. The lead in the individual ranking is also up to him.
American Mitchel Guthrie finished first in the second special stage with his light prototype T3M of the Off-Road Jr. team. Team USA by BFG. Over the course of the distance, he managed to stay one and a half minutes ahead of the most experienced Francisco Lopez, but the Chilean retains the class lead.
In the T4 class, where racers compete in light SUVs, but not as highly modified as the T3, Pole Marek Gochal, competing in the CAN-AM Maverick XRS, is still ahead of everyone else.
In the truck class, the situation is not yet very clear: it was initially announced that victory on the stage would go to the crew of Janus van Kasteren, driving an Iveco prepared by the renowned Team De Rooy, but it seems that when the Dutch trio was fined and Ales Loprais came out on top riding a Praga V4S DKR. The Czech squad is the leader in the T5 category and follows the results over two days.
Tomorrow’s special stage “Alula – Hail” with a length of 447 km, like today, mainly goes through rocky ravines, which again poses a high risk of punctures and other problems, which can lead to significant changes in the balance of power, but this is on the “Dakar” The usual.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
